i was young and i needed the money, december, 2005

i knew, those macs were good for something

former picture of the month: picture of the century ?

yeah gunter, as if: picture of the century. well, one has
got to try. for the uninitialized: we probably shall
not see the church st. bonifaz open, to be viewed from
a distance from the whole southside like this in
the next onehundred years - including the concrete-pump and the crane.

the secret double life of F. L.

during the day i am selling my soul and coding vba. but, as soon,
as the twilight of the night sets in, i am hacking java.

well bullshit. vba can be an extremely powerful toolset to
enhance windows — especially ms office — applications.
i never tinkered with the api of openoffice, but the transition
of vba-empored ms-office documents/databases, or rather the lack
of transition, should be a major obstacle for the adoption of open office
in a lot of companies.

it is amazing, how many hundred lines of banal code one can hack
away in a day with clear specifications and targets. some of it is
apparently one shot spaghetti code, some of it is kind of modular.
i shall see, how much fun i will have with maintaining my code.

another thrilling experience is the maintainance of some other
person´s application´s. but as i am working on a stable
foundation and got the number of my predecessor, i am very optimistic.

working and eating in a traditional environment in lover bavaria

pretty soon after some days i had the image of a
kerndlfresser (negative bavarian term for someone who is
trying to nourish healthy, in the same sense of a tree-hugger) even
though i do not have lunch together with my colleges on a regular basis.
for every time i have a salad, i would have to eat five
times liver-loaf to avoid the verdict of a kerndlfresser.
but i am being accepted nonetheless. thank you.

nazi aftermath

there is a small but nice new feature on this site:
visual denazifaction.
head over there and check it out right now.

merry christmas

inspiration for the masses, november, 2005

theatiner burning

sometimes i feel unsatisfied with my little ixus i, but some shots compensate for
that.

franz marc resurrected

the last time i saw a museum from the inside was three years ago in
vienna. for five years i actually studied no more than 800m apart from
some of mankind's greatest pieces of art without ever putting a foot
inside of one of the pinakotheken.

now i exposed myself to a mainstream art event in the
lenbachhaus: the putatively
most comprehensive franz marc exhibit
ever. it probably was not a inspiring, but for sure a very delighting
and refreshing experience. go check it out in munich till the 8th of
january 2006.

my accompaniment had to struggle with her stereotypes, that somebody,
presenting himself in traditional bavarian garbs, could actually belong
to the artistic avant garde. see the following shame-attack-picture:

parallel work environments

it seems that there are at least two very different work
environments in germany. experiences in the last months shook
me up quite a bit. i don't know, how this is going to work
out in the long term. i feel quite unsettled about all this.
i walked the world pretty ignorant up until now. i shall not
go into detail here, but if you know me, you might know what
i am talking about.

envy me, for i am a surveyor, october, 2005

my best fall ever?

in september and october i was involved in a topographical survey
project along the danube river. there were several extremely stable
high pressure areas over central europe during that time and i had
to apply sun protection on a daily basis if i didn't want my skin to
totally dry out.

a lot of the area is actually a nature preserve and it was quite
pleasant. i was happy to own a cellular phone with an audio-player and
especially a radio as i caught myself talking to myself one time.

i can not really evaluate the ecological value of the flora and
fauna along the waterside, but the conditions for gnats must be quite
good.

i for one welcome our new bloodsucking mosquito overlords

i am all for donating blood, but this is too much. not only did
i need sun-blocker, but anti insect as well.

it's comin' right at me and it got a laser!

to eat or not to eat?

to destroy or not to destroy?

the more serious plans for upgrading / extending the waterway,
which the danube is, would most likely destroy the waterline as
seen here. definitely a bad thing.

back in business, september, 2005

new developments in surveying

an isolation-mattress can actually be used to compensate
the vibrations of a floor while surveying. some kind of atr
is recommended.

the picture of the month is not necessarily a current picture,
just something to ease the feeling of the page. this picture
is for example about six month old.

jalbum skin

i did a skin for the
great, powerful and flexible image-gallery-generation software
jalbum. i would love to get some
feedback on usability and looks. you
can also download the skin
and push its download statistic!

caught in apathy?

i am finally back in employment. and i didn't really use the spare
time while being in-between-projects. damn. i knew, this was
going to happen. for example i actually wanted to get, at least, this
page going with a new layout and an actual domain. bad, bad florian.

another summer wasted, august, 2005

pimp my website

trip to berlin

i made a trip to berlin for two nights, helping my sister
finding a flat or room. it was actually very exciting and
inspiring. i should go for vacation more often. compared
to my last trip four or five years ago, the city evolved
quite a bit. there is even a small
picture gallery.
check out the trashed election posters.

ethical questions to be discussed, july, 2005

to shower, or not to shower?

there is the theory, that electronics can get as wet as one can
make them, as long as you do not send any power through them while
still wet. conclusion: two keyboards tested, fifty percent casualties.
thus it would be unethical for me to recommend you to take your
keyboard with you under the shower. even though it is great to see
all the dirt emanating from between the keys. however i advocate not
leaving bottles of sweet sodas standing on your workdesk.
during my military service there was the saying, that a soldier,
who really loves his rifle, takes it with him below the shower
in order to clean it. oh well.

ethical question of the month

looking for new employment. with what position should i be content with?
should i settle with a job below my capabilities? apart from not being
challenged, and probably feeling uncomfortable, i am actually wasting
resources, which could otherwise server economy and society. the fact is
in germany college is free (right now). and, by reading the business section
of the newspaper from time to time, i learned, that the economic growth in
germany will be obstructed by lack on engineers in the near future. of
course those articles are talking about electrical engineers and similar
faculties. hey, i got useful skills as well!

another duty to the german society would be fathering and bringing up lots
of children, ahm, i mean tax-payers. but that is another whole story.

back to myself looking for a job. most important is of course me getting a
paying profession as fast as possible so i can pay tribute into our public
pension- and health-care system. this ain't fun.

understanding search engine indices

i did some ego-surfing. florere is acceptable
placed in the yahoo/altavista index. it is neither in the
google nor the msn index. being the snob i am, i
don't necessarily want to be found by msn users. not being
indexed by google is acceptable and understandable, as the page-rank
must be somewhere below zero, not being linked by nobody. i however
remember this site to be placed very prominently in the google index
for about eight weeks in spring of 2004. back than i linked my
dhtml slides project
in one of the site point
dhtml forums. somehow this single link catapulted my site up to
incredible heights in the google index.

so what did i learn out of this? spamming site point forums
with links is probably a bad thing. ethically right would
be to create good content. there the circle closes again.

leather work and our electronic devices

apropos ixus - those mobile digital devices are getting out of control.
one evening after work, i catched myself reading out the pictures from my
ixus(usb) and taking the batteries for charging. then i read out
some surveying data from a leica tcr703(legacy seriell port)
total-station and charged its batteries. then i moved some data from my
usb-stick to my box, followed by moving some mp3s to my cellular phone
after hooking it up to the charging-adapter.
we are slaves to our devices!
maybe it will be possible to transport energy wireless. recharging your mobile,
by putting it in the microwave.

ethics? you should probably go out and pay four bucks for a plastic
case for your camera, so the poor soul working in the vietnamese sweatshop
can support here kids.

feature creep or incremental development? june, 2005

picture of the month

probably a new feature, provided that i am able
to provide a stream of fresh, high-quality pictures.

this is the sign of a wheelchair-accessible toilet
inside a bmw plant. i guess when you are building cars
with a sporty image, wheelchairs got to be sporty as well.

the return of the mc

so i got my first own car after a while. i tried to avoid it,
but i failed. this car is equipped with a cassette player. at first
i reactivated the cassettes i had put away in a drawer. deja vu!
those cassettes where taped in 1997/1998 - what a flashback!

after some time i got tired of the old shit and decided to get
some new music in the car. as i did not feel like investing in
some new media player for my car the choice was clear: i got to
record some new tapes. in 2005. right now i am burning
cds from my mp3s and than using those to record tapes in my
parents hi-fi unit. yes, pathetic it is, but it works. unfortunately
the stereo can not handle cdrws, but media is cheap. cheaper
than creating some creative solution. and no, the stereo can
not handle an auxiliary-input.

a cheap memory stick with 0,5gb and a mp3-player costs less
than 100€. it can not take too long till we see some more
advanced audio playback capability at affordable prizes for cars.

florere is one year old, may, 2005

this homepage

so this page is one year old. i am curious how it will evolve over the years.
i probably should order some dirt-cheap webspace offering a little bit mojo e.g.
php, perl and a real domain. but that is all inane without content, of which we
did not see too much lately.
i just read in an article, that personal, very elaborate websites with galleries
and blogs are a thing of shy people who otherwise do not present or depict oneself.
well duh, but interesting to be confronted with the facts from time to time.

job opportunities

our company has been purchased by another company. right now, we are being
integrated and i have a strange feeling of deja vu. during my second
internship while studying i was able to observe a similar process as an
outside observer. back than the gis company smallworld was integrated
by ge. first there where gesmallworld coffee-mugs and shirts,
than the name smallworld vanished and now there is only ge network solutions.
back than, as a student, i didn't take part in six sigma programs and similar
madness, i just just observed the moaning of my coworkers. currently i am experiencing
the insanity first hand.
our new company does not yet know for sure, what they actually bought. but they
are trying hard and i am agog for the things to come.

spring is coming, march, 2005

how do you know spring is comin'?

you leave the house in the morning and think: "hey, it's kind of mild.",
even though the thermometer still indicates -1° below zero.

those damn birds delight me with aries even before i get out of home

those skirts are becoming short. some women must have been desperately
waiting for a chance to take those pieces out of the closet!

personal whish-list online

i put a personal wish list online.
not that i expect anything out of it - but one has got to be prepared.

procrastination for the pros

i stumbled over an interesting approach towards
procrastination
by john perry. he has a ph.d. in philosophy, whatever that might be worth. don't
hesitate to go there right now! ;-)

great winter

the snow situation this winter was great for us flachlandbayern
([german]: flatlandbavarians). we had lot of snow in february followed
by stable below freezing temperatures. it was great. thanks to the weather
gods for this. i see myself full of yearning in the following years
for a winter like this. maybe i should relocate to some location with
a more dependable snow-situation. and in the middle of march, when it seemed
as spring took over, we had a grand finale with another 30cm of wet, packing,
children's delight snow -
snow glory and my bike [picture].

work in the wonderland

at times my workplace as surveyor in factory halls can feel anything
from strange to disturbing.
when running between conveyor belts, moving with the rhythm of the machinery,
i feel like super mario in some jmp-n-run adventure.
sometimes, when its hot, loud and the machinery is especially bestial,
it feels as if i were right in the pits of isengard.
and occasionally, when it's especially lonesome, eerie and strange, it
feels like a kafkaesque nightmare.
i love those moments, when fantasy strikes...

ice 3

i finally had the chance to ride in an
ice 3 train
by siemens for the first time and get some in-person impressions: the interior seems
to be an improvement. i didn't like the chrome on the luggage department.
my seat made some undefinable cheap noises. the bathrooms are identical in
both the first and the second class. they are fitted with classy,
big mirror fronts [picture].
unfortunately the route was not prepared for high speeds and
we couldn't test our 330km/h potential. and even though we rode in the
flagship of the deutsche bahn, we were 20 minutes late. sigh.

law-and-order in munich

on law-and-order in bavaria, and munich especially. i'll start with some
background information:

fact one:

bavaria is ruled by the conservative christ-socialist-party
enforcing - compared to other states in germany - a kind
of tough "law-and-order" policy.

fact two:

in munich quite a lot of newspapers are sold in unlocked
boxes where people can take a paper and place the appropriate
money in a deposit slit. there are of course black-sheeps, but
generally this system works quite well.

so two of my colleges and myself walk through
the streets of munich after having something to eat at a restaurant:

colleague number one from berlin said:

"these boxes are open? unbelievable — in berlin, the box would
be plundered after five minutes and the papers would be sold twenty
meters farther ahead on the road. after ten minutes someone would have
broken into the money department of the box and after 15 minutes
the box would be burning"

colleague number two from peru stated in conformation:

"yes, just like in peru."

even though they both exaggerated (i hope so), it still feels kind of
nice, that a system, based on public trust, is working. on the other side,
it can happen to you, that you are being confronted by some cops whether
you smoked something because you look suspicious to them. well, it is not
like bavaria is a police state - not at all, but still. so what is it, that
i wanted to say? i guess, everthing has its pros and cons, advantages and
disadvantages, and the way of the middle is mostly the best.

another fat "duh!" for myself

blog opinions

from the experiences i made with writing these sometimes monthly entries
i would say, that writing a daily blog in a non-native tongue is probably not
very intuitive and spontaneous. it is possible, but it is probably not a
good idea. it can never be as intensive as writing in your own language.
well - duh. it is probably okay for a very functional, objective and error
tolerant blog.

yes it's fucking political, february 2005

okay, those are not the bravest statements i made, but they are still
statements. i thought, rather than wasting screen estate of my visitors
with blank space, i might as well use it to promote some opinions. it is
not too offensive for the eyes, is separated from the content, hell it looks
like a fucking google ad! redesign suggestions are welcome. it degrades
gracefully, even though not the way i would like it to do. shit, i wanted to
concentrate on content, not layout. did i mention, that ie has some
problems with web-standards?

more nullities, january 2005

maybe i should switch to quarterly updates ...

been working on some content for the site in recent times. i hope to publish
something in the next months. i think it is good to put oneself under some
pressure.

been doing some hacking lately and i keep observing myself ignoring basic
development rules all the time. fortunately i am not doing this for a living.
i would have to fire me.
i just found a sourceforge project tackling a problem i already spend some time
on. funny. when i last checked about ten month ago, there were no started projects.
now there is one beta-product and about three other projects which have of course
not yet released anything.
but i don't like approach he took, and want to finish my project.
now i understand, where all those open-source-projects come from.
I could have a running first version of my approach up and running, but you know,
feature creep and stuff.

I am having problems with recording radio-programs over my line-IN
on my computer. Both under Linux and Win2K. Very quit and scratchy. I think
it might have to do with the level provided by my bose-radio. If anybody
knows of a nice page about digital recording of radio-data please let
me know.